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Cooking was soothing. Scott chopped vegetables quickly to add them to whatever dishes he was going to make next. The chicken was already prepped and he had enough cabbage he could survive the rest of the series on cabbage rolls alone. The sound of the knife and the crunch of the carrots rhythmically filled the room. He dumped his ingredients into a bowl when he ran out of things to chop and grabbed some rice from the barrels above him.
The night outside was quiet, calm. Small insects buzzed under his window and even smaller lights flickered around the trees. A small part of him shuddered at the darkness, screamed at him to find light and quickly, but the rest of him breathed and started washing the rice in his cauldron. The water was fresh, and cool. He could barely see his reflection in the water. His hair was blond, bright blond, almost white, but his eyes were still blue. Not green, or yellow, or red, but blue.
Jimmy hadn't come back to this world, neither had Scar, but he wasn't on often before either so that wasn't much of a change. Martyn... was also gone. He'd lasted longer than anyone in his first life which shouldn't have surprised him given Martyn's slippery nature. The others, Lizzie, Joel, Pearl, and Gem...
He wasn't thinking about Gem. He shoved that confusing ball of emotions deep down inside. The point was, he was one of the last people left in this world, and the only one that stared into a cauldron to check if his eyes were still blue.
He continued to wash the rice and then pulled it out of the cauldron. It was simple to start it cooking in his pot. He checked to see if he had enough kindling for the fire and then let it do its thing. The small flickering flame bathed his home in light and his side in warmth.
So many memories sat in this place. His first conversations with Owen about setting up more storylines were when it was just an empty patch of land. He got Martyn's frantic pleas to help him from floating up in the sky while he was building the farm outside. His first picture with 'Sparrow' happened at his little table. He made meals for everyone in this kitchen.
There was no one left to cook for.
Scott sighed and set down the knife he had just picked up. It should have been fine. In every other world he was fine not cooking for everyone else. But it itched at him. There was no one left. He had nothing left to prove. So many bags of food sat untouched in people's doorways. Little notes went unread. His gestures went unnoticed.
"Well, I was going to give you this," Scott dropped the disk on the ground quickly. When he looked back up a chill ran through him. Gem was walking closer, no-- stalking closer. Pearl looked down from her horse with a wicked grin. Impulse was still behind them all, eyes narrowed and tracking his movements. Scar laughed.
"nice gift--"
"That's, that's so nice," Gem's voice was sickly sweet.
"That's so nice of you, Scott," Pearl crowed.
He backed away. A dog brushed against his leg, pushing him to the side as he backed towards the Secret Keeper looming over them all. He rambled as he started running towards the water, his bastian of safety ever since the last game. The group heckled him and followed at a leisurely pace.
"Hey Scar, you wanna take the first hit?" Gem said.
"First hit?!" Scott glanced back. Gem was unrecognizable. Red looked different on everyone, but he never expected Gem to become so cold and gleeful. Maybe he should have. She stood behind the rest, looking him dead in the eye. The wind didn't even move her hair. Her left eye was a swirling pit of void, dark and oppressive. He felt it calling him. He'd just barely managed to escape its grasp when Lizzie ambushed him.
It was calling him back.
Someone knocked on the door. Scott cursed as he jumped. Thankfully no one was around to see that. He took a deep breath and covered the pot of rice.
It was Owen.
"Hey dude," he walked past him and settled in at his place at the kitchen table.
Scott stood motionless at the door for a moment. The skulk had grown across Owen's face. It was... that was normal of course for the hybrid code on the server. They'd both read up on skulk hybrids plenty to understand that skulk growth and shifting patterns was healthy and normal. That wasn't what froze him in place.
It was covering his left eye. Dark flickering matter covered his friend's eye. Even the sclera was dark and empty like something else was staring at him from inside his friend. Something deep and buried that made his new hybrid instincts rise in his defense. He didn't like the dark. It was everything he wasn't right now.
"So, I have a plan, but it's going to take some work," Owen pulled out his well-worn notebook and laid out some sheets of paper across the table. "I'll need a bunch of tnt and some tps over to some of the dungeons we found last week. I think they will work perfectly for this... Scott? You know I can't see you if you're standing still."
"Right, right," he closed the door and plastered on a smile. He was here with his friend. This was fine. "One sec, I was just about to eat."
"Oh! Of course."
He checked on the rice, seeing that it was boiling nicely, and grabbed some of his prepped cabbage rolls from the barrel alongside two carved wooden plates. They lightly clunked against the table as he set one in front of Owen and another by his seat.
"So, tell me everything from the top."
"Right, so I thought this ending would be a one and done adventure, but I think Sparrow needs a better send off so it's going to be a two parter."
"Naturally," Scott grabbed his food and absentmindedly started eating.
"So, I already filmed the first part in that solo world you helped me set up. I did the whole thing about finding out the Warden's plan and wanting to stop it, but I haven't explored much of the cool overworld stuff here. Sparrow obviously will want to come to you for help, but the skulk doesn't want him to so it hijacks the waystones to send him to a random village thousands of blocks out.
"I figured since the waystones work on xp and the skulk is basically living xp it would make enough sense that people wouldn't question it too much. I found a set of coordinates you can tp me to so I can get there without actually having the waystone, cause that would break immersion."
"I can do that for sure," Scott nodded. He ran his finger in the grooves of the table, his fingernail catching at the odd points. "What next, do you have a script for when you get to me? I'll need a moment to memorize if you need me to say anything specific."
"Here," Owen pushed a wrinkled piece of paper across the table.
Scott skimmed over it, getting the highlights about how Owen wasn't a real hybrid, but that was okay. There were some notes about the conversation getting more heated as it went.
"The skulk doesn't want Sparrow to stop it, so it actually starts taking over in this scene. Half of those lines aren't him actually speaking," Owen explained. "And, well... There's two ways I think this could end depending on how you want your story to end? Do you still want me to take your second to last life?"
"Hmm," Scott sighed.
"We can do without it, of course, it doesn't matter much to my storyline. If you barely manage to escape or even if Sparrow just manages to come to his senses in time it will work for me. I just know that's what we talked about before."
Scott turned the piece of paper over. There were several endings scribbled out in Owen's messy handwriting. The first one was Sparrow killing him. There was an intense monologue written underneath, one that had been written and rewritten over and over again until it was just right.
"Gem, you need to kill me. Gem, you need to kill me. Gem, you need to kill me," Scott ran to the Secret Keeper, sprinting towards Gem.
"Why do I need to kill you?" Gem looked like she was caught off guard as he dragged her over to a little cranny.
"I'm on two and a half hearts. If they get me they'll get the ten. I don't think I can do it," he was out of breath and looked at her frantically, trying to calm his racing heart. "You're gonna need to do it."
"but Scott--"
"Take this," he cut her off by pulling stuff out of his inventory. They didn't have time for second guesses and regrets. If this got her even a second further it would be worth it. "and this, and some mutton. And here's a Power IV bow."
He handed it over to her gently, trying to give her a reassuring smile. She was scared. He was scared. The end was always bad, but it just hurt so much more this time. He ignored the deep ache in his bones, the bleeding wounds that just refused to heal.
"Go, Gem," he said. "Carry it."
The pain stopped. The void finally came for him, dragging him down into the abyss. It was the last thing he saw before--
"Scott?" Owen prompted. "You okay?"
He looked up from the table, meeting one warm brown eye and another enshrouded in darkness. He rolled his eyes and grinned.
"I'm always fine," he said. "Let's stick with the original plan. It looks great! What do you want to do after? I imagine it doesn't end with this?"
"Well," Owen hesitated as if trying to gauge where Scott was actually at. He just gave a winning smile and Owen started explaining. "The second to last episode ends with Sparrow sealing himself in the ancient city with the tnt I mentioned, but get this--"
They spent the next couple of hours hashing out the details of everything. Scott tossed in ideas for worldbuilding and how to tie in his bits. Owen was planning on ending up back at human which was easy enough to do, but most of Scott's finale was dependent on his random origin upon respawn.
The moon rose, shining through the windows, offering more light on Owen's notes and reflecting off the walls. It left strange shadow's across his friend's face as he talked animatedly about their shared projects. Scott's plate was long empty as they wrapped up. Both of them were exhausted, getting a little giggly and loopy before he eventually chased Owen off and back home. They could finish planning in the morning.
Scott's smile fell as he closed the door. He let out a small sigh of relief and picked his way towards the table. The papers were cleaned up, aside from the notes he'd taken for himself.
The cabbage rolls sat untouched on Owen's plate. He hadn’t eaten them. He didn't need to.
Scott tried to shake the image of dark void from his mind. Another friend's blade sticking through his chest. Why wasn't it worth it? When would it pay off?
His footsteps sounded deafening in the empty room. A simple glance back at the kitchen revealed the mess of rice he'd started hours ago. It had boiled over and burned, leaving dark marks over the pot and an acrid smell in the air. With a sigh, Scott cleaned everything up and put things away.
Then he grabbed some flour and water and began to mix together some dough. Bread for breakfast sounded nice. Cooking was soothing.
The plate remained untouched on the table, cold and unwanted. There was nobody left, but at least cooking was soothing.